 Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to tomorrow. Last week I talked about Virgin Galactic and the results from the crash investigation that the National Transportation Safety Board was doing, and this week I want to talk a little bit more about their competitors, specifically X-Core Aerospace, who has released some new information about their science payloads, as well as a really interesting suborbital space plane project from DARPA, and that's what we're going to be talking about for this, your space pod for August 11th, 2015. So first off, X-Core Aerospace has released a lot of information about the science payloads that could be brought along with their links space plane. Specifically, this would be for the links Mark II, because the links Mark I is just going to be the prototype to make sure that, you know, all their systems actually work for flight. Before the links Mark II, some of the payloads are going to be internal and external. For the internal payloads, a lot of this has already been publicly available for a while, but for the alpha payloads, it would be an experiment rack that would fit behind the pilot's seat, and then for their beta experiment, they would either have a mission specialist or a passenger who would operate those experiments and perform other tasks, or replace the passenger seat with another larger payload rack for experiments. The prices for the alpha experiment have tentatively been set at $50,000, and then for the beta experiment, depending on if you have a passenger or a payload rack, the prices vary between $95,000 to $150,000. Now, their external experiments is where we're getting some new information. First off, their Charlie experiments are going to be two aft cowling ports that would be able to fit up to a two-unit cube set in size, and also about two kilograms of weight. For these aft cowling ports, they would not deploy any cube sets or whatever payload is inside of them, but the payload can get access to power from the link space plane and also have access to the external environment via port hatch. The prices for these aft cowling port experiments are about $20,000, so that's the cheapest of them so far. And finally, the Delta experiment, and this is the one that I've been excited about for quite a while and am very happy to finally get some more information about it. For the Delta experiment, it's only going to be on the links Mark III, and unfortunately, only in the United States. Anyway, an external dorsal mounted pod could deliver a space telescope, returnable payloads, kind of like the Charlie experiments, or have a two-stage booster capable of delivering nano-sats into low earth orbit. The prices for this is ranging between $250,000 to $500,000. The other space plane I wanted to talk about today is actually being worked on, or at least funded, by DARPA. And what they've done is they've funded three companies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Mastin Space Systems, to develop a reusable unmanned space plane that would be able to travel into suborbital heights and then release an upper stage that would also be able to deliver nano-sats and small satellites into orbit. DARPA has initiated the second phase of this program, or phase 1B, of what they're calling the XS-1, with the purpose of identifying core technology, mitigating risk, and developing a technology maturation plan and performing some demonstration tasks to eventually fabricate and fly an unmanned suborbital space plane that would release an upper stage capable of delivering a 3,000-pound spacecraft to orbit, for a cost of no more than $5 million per launch. For this round, DARPA has funded $20 million in all, and it's been split between Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Mastin Space Systems. Also for some other quick but really awesome news, Russia has formally committed to international space station operations through to 2024, which is awesome because Congress is pretty much allowing NASA to go through 2024, and with Russia support then that pretty much means that the space station will be able to continue operations through 2024. We're still waiting on some sort of decision about the 2024 date from the European Space Agency as well as JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. But with the two big partners, the United States and Russia formally agreeing and committing to the 2024 date, I have a pretty good feeling that the European Space Agency and JAXA will be not far behind in committing to 2024, so the longer that we can use the international space station the better. Anyway, leave me a comment about what you think about these different space plane ideas and this international space station news. I'm really excited about all of this for sure. Also, if you are willing and able, then please donate to our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash spacepod so that we can continue to keep making space news videos like this. Thank you so much to everyone who's donated already and it really does make a huge difference. Anyway, thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark and hopefully you know a little bit more today than you did yesterday, thanks to tomorrow. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I will see you in the future.